The Fruitful Facets of Galton's Polyhedron 385
more general problems of biology. It is also the one word that best emphasizes the
essential unity of ontogeny and phylogeny. These two terms have been used as if
they stood for two distinct series of phenomena, when in reality they apply to one
and the same series" (1919, p. 177). Phylogeny therefore becomes as determinate
as growth itself: "Not only is the direction of the change hitherto discoverable, but
its future course is predictable" (1919, p. 38).
In his most telling statement, and in response to de Vries's oft-repeated but
invalid argument (see p. 445) that orthogenesis revitalizes teleology, Whitman
invokes the ontogenetic comparison to defend orthogenesis as the position most
consistent with a mechanistic worldview:
I take exception here only to the implication that a definite variation ten-
dency must be considered to be teleological because it is not "orderless." I
venture to assert that variation is sometimes orderly and at other times
rather disorderly, and that the one is just as free from teleology as the other.
In our aversion to the old teleology, so effectually banished from science by
Darwin, we should not forget that the world is full of order, the organic no
less than the inorganic. Indeed, what is the whole development of an
organism if not strictly and marvelously orderly? Is not every stage, from
the primordial germ onward, and the whole sequence of stages, rigidly
orthogenetic? ... If a developmental process may run on throughout life,...
what wonder if we find a whole species gravitating slowly in one or a few
directions?... If a designer sets limits to variation in order to reach a definite
end, the direction of events is teleological; but if organization and the laws
of development exclude some lines of variation and favor others, there is
certainly nothing supernatural in this (1919, p. 11).Darwin had begun the Origin of Species in a most honorable way that
affirmed the necessary, and heretofore largely lacking, empirical foundation of
evolutionary argument. Darwin's first chapter did not announce to the world his
sweeping reform of all life and thought; instead, he wrote about pigeons (1859, p.
20): "Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have, after
deliberation, taken up domestic pigeons. I have kept every breed which I could
purchase, or obtain, and have been most kindly favored with skins from several
quarters of the world ... I have associated with several eminent fanciers, and have
been permitted to join two of the London pigeon clubs."
Darwin used pigeons to advance the two primary and distinct arguments of
his book: (1) the factual claim that evolution had occurred, and represented the
source of organic relationships, and (2) the theoretical assertion that natural
selection operated as the primary cause of evolutionary change. He supported the
first contention by proving that the full range of extensive diversity in modern
domesticated breeds had descended from a common wild source, the rock-pigeon
Columba livia. (Darwin then added the crucial analogical argument that such
intraspecific change could, by extension, serve as a model